Buying data backup hardware has never been easy, but companies are leveraging vendor relationships to get discounts and other benefits.

When storage pros go shopping for data backup hardware gear, they're most likely to check out the big boys of backup first, with vendors like Dell, EMC, HPE, IBM and NetApp getting most of the attention.

In our post-purchase survey, Dell (19%) and EMC (18%) led the way among vendors racking up recent data backup hardware sales. Even when they didn't clinch a sale, those same vendors were the most likely culprits to end up on storage buyers' short list.

On average, storage backup buyers shelled out nearly $250,000 for their data backup hardware purchases -- but that average was jacked up by some big-buy storage shops. Perhaps a more revealing number is the 43% of survey takers who said they spent less than $50,000 on their backup kit.

But even a $250,000 purchase isn't hard to imagine as the average capacity that our respondents said they have backed up was a whopping 661 TB. And that dovetailed into the most critical features of the data backup hardware purchases noted by those respondents: capacity (49%) and scalability (38%) led the list of must-have features.

Backup buyers are a shrewd lot, and they managed to extract some concessions from the vendors they bought from. Discounts are the primary goal; 37% of our group reported receiving discounts ranging from a modest 1% to 10% price cut for 13% of respondents to a price slashing of more than 50% that 5% of respondents were proud to report.

Non-monetary concessions are often part of storage purchase deals. Our group said their data backup hardware deals were sweetened by concessions such as free professional services (8%), an extra year of maintenance (7%), enhanced SLAs (5%) or a little more product tossed into the pot (5%).

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